Qualla: Crosby

Crosby: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Finn Bjorklid, Public domain. For one week every year, the road through Crosby is closed to cars and given over to motorcycles travelling at well over a hundred miles per hour. The village of about 900 people, sitting at the crossroads where the A1 from Douglas meets the smaller roads to Mount Rule and Garth, becomes one of the watching points on the legendary Isle of Man TT Mountain Course. The rest of the year it is a quiet place: a play park, a football pitch, a cricket ground, a Methodist chapel, a pub, and an old stone church whose oldest walls go back to the twelfth century. Crosby's name comes from the Gaelic Baile na Croise, the town of the cross, and the crossroads have shaped its identity for at least a thousand years.

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Image: Finn Bjorklid | Public domain

Crosby: Where the Roads Meet

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Glyn Baker, CC BY-SA 2.0. Crosby lies in the centre of the parish of Marown, halfway between Douglas and Peel on the A1, the island's primary east-west road. The River Dhoo flows just to the south, running down the Central valley toward the capital. The village name itself is geography in shorthand: cross...

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Image: Glyn Baker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Crosby: An Old Church, a New Use

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Hoare, CC BY-SA 2.0. St Runius is the old parish church of Marown, and it sits in Crosby. Parts of it go back to the twelfth century. It was expanded in 1754 and then, when a newer parish church was built up the road in 1859, the old building was demoted to a mortuary chapel. Part of the east side wa...

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Image: Richard Hoare | CC BY-SA 2.0

Crosby: A Station That Outlived Its Line

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shazz, CC BY-SA 2.0. Crosby got its railway station on 1 July 1873, when the Isle of Man Railway opened the Douglas-to-Peel line through Marown. The station served until 7 September 1968, when the line closed. Ninety-five years, then nothing. The station was demolished, but the trackbed survives. It ...

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Image: Shazz | CC BY-SA 2.0

Crosby: Crosby Crossroads, 1911 and After

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Wilkinson from London, CC BY-SA 2.0. Motor racing came to the Isle of Man very early, partly because the island had its own government and could legalise road racing while Britain still banned it. From 1906 the Crosby section of the A1 was part of the Highland Course, used for the early Tourist Trophy car races. Bet...

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Image: Andrew Wilkinson from London | CC BY-SA 2.0